Thursday, February 11, 2010

WHAT TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS ARE SAYING
M2M magazine invited leaders in the wireless sensor networking space to share their expertise on both the business and technological aspects of implementing sensor networking technology.

PART 1: BUSINESS QUESTIONS
1. Bottomline: Are sensor networks past their experimental phase, and does the technology really work?
2. Cost: What determines the total cost of a typical sensor-network deployment?
3. Time: What usually determines the amount of time required to deploy a sensor network?
4. Scalability: How much does the cost and complexity of a sensor network increase with the number of nodes?
5. Management: What is required to manage a sensor network on a daily basis?
6. Troubleshooting: Who is typically responsible for fixing problems with a sensor network after deployment?
7. Interface: How is sensor data usually presented to the end user?
8. Integration: How can companies integrate sensor data with other business systems?
9. Duration: How should adopters approach a temporary installation compared to a permanent one?
10. ROI: What are the best ways to measure return-on-investment for a sensor network?

PART 2: TECHNOLOGY QUESTIONS
1. Resources: What level of technical skill is required to set up and maintain a sensor network?
2. Setup: How is a sensor network installed and activated?
3. Logistics: What are the range limits and physical limitations of a sensor network?
4. Power: What should an adopter understand about power requirements and battery life?
5. Security: How can an adopter make sure its sensor-network data is secure?
6. Reliability: What steps should an adopter take to ensure reliability of the network?
7. Infrastructure: How can a company leverage its existing network infrastructure when deploying a sensor network?
8. Hardware: What criteria should adopters use for selecting a hardware platform?
9. Intelligence: When should a sensor network have distributed processing capability?
10 (a). Standards: What should adopters understand about the standards associated with sensor networking?
10 (b). More Standards: Which proprietary protocols should adopters avoid?

"In this tutorial, we build upon our recently published work on the analysis of state-of-the-art WSN programming. We illustrate a thorough classification of available solutions, complemented by direct, practical experience of the technology at hand. We begin with a characterization of WSN applications, to identify the fundamental requirements programming platforms must deal with. This is followed by the core of the tutorial, a taxonomy of WSN programming solutions providing a foundation to classify, compare, and evaluate existing approaches. Throughout the tutorial, we interleave live demonstrations of WSN systems with the presentation of the main tutorial material, to provide attendees with the opportunity to see the technology in action. Our tutorial is aimed at students starting off in the field of WSN programming, and at researchers willing to gain deeper insights in the field. Practitioners can also benefit from the systematic overview on the topic."

The Longyan municipal government of Fujian province and Tsinghua Tongfang Company recently signed a framework cooperation agreement to construct the "Internet of Things." The construction of the "Internet of Things" will soon start in the city.

According to sources, it is China's first "Internet of Things" to be built by a city. Longyan will focus on digital urban management, "waterless harbor" and public emergency and will complete the "Internet of Things" that will cover the first, second and third industries as well as municipal management in 3 years.

"Daintree's SNA provides a powerful development, analysis and troubleshooting tool for 6LoWPAN. Its Packet List and Packet Timeline windows show a summary of all packets received. You can select a packet in either window to display its details in the Packet Decode window, through which you can "drill down" and see details for every field and every byte within that packet."

Green Goose is a new financial management service that launched today, which connects sensor activity to your savings account. At first Green Goose sounded a little gimmicky. Using green Internet-connected eggs, it measures how much energy you expend on your bike or how much water you use in your shower - and transfers amounts from your checking account to your savings account based on the 'savings' you made doing those activities.

What's interesting though is that the savings are calculated based on the actions measured by small battery-powered, wireless sensors. You stick these sensors on your bike, thermostat, showerhead "and even your keychain."

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of thousands of smart-sensing nodes, which capture environment data for a sink node. Such networks present new challenges when compared with traditional computer networks, namely in terms of smart node hardware constraints and very limited energy resources. Ubiquitous computing can benefit from WSNs from the perspective that sensed data can be used instead of the user without explicit intervention, turning ubiquitous computing into a reality. Internet connectivity in WSNs is highly desirable, featuring sensing services at a global scale.

Two main approaches are considered: proxy based or sensor node stack based. This second approach turns sensors into data-producing hosts also known as The Internet of Things. For years, the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) suite was considered inappropriate for WSNs, mainly due to the inherent complexity and protocol overhead for such limited hardware. However, recent studies made connecting WSNs to the Internet possible, namely using sensor node stack based approaches, enabling integration into the future Internet. This paper surveys the current state-of-the-art on the connection of WSNs to the Internet, presents related achievements, and provides insights on how to develop IP-based communication solutions for WSNs today.

Electric utilities can more quickly adopt smart grid capabilities by combining intelligent distributed sensing from CURRENT Group with an Internet Protocol-based solution from Verizon. Under a new agreement, the two companies are enabling real-time power consumption and analysis communications between electric companies and sensors deployed on their networks.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

While everyone is talking about cloud computing (including me, because mobile cloud services is going to be one of the main topic of 2010), another phenomenon is becoming more visible, every day. We are about to enter the Internet of Things era.
Every device out there will get an IP address. And it will be able to dialog with the rest of the world.

IEEE PES and the New Orleans Local Organizing Committee are planning an entire day on Wednesday, April 21 that will be devoted to Smart Grid technology and innovation.

"Smart Grid" is becoming a household term not only in the US but all over the world. Development of a "smart" technology to promote and coordinate more efﬁcient electricity usage has become a key element in the plan to lower energy costs for consumers, achieve energy independence, and re-duce greenhouse gas emissions. A Smart Grid, as deﬁned by the US Department of Energy, integrates advanced sensing technologies, control methods and integrated communications into the existing electricity grid. Although Smart Grid technology presents opportunities for utilities and consumers to beneﬁt from the efﬁcient management of energy, sig-niﬁcant challenges need to be addressed to integrate and deploy these innovative technologies. The IEEE PES is committed to lead the effort to coor-dinate and develop the necessary expertise, standards, and application of Smart Grid technologies.